Snippings

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My observation is that many digital driving licence designs being rolled out right now fail on several of these “good/better” design checks, in fact, when closely examined, most are a step backwards not forwards despite their “look at me” quality for press releases.

From (2) Digital Driving Licences – failing the test? | LinkedIn:

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The EU will set up a new college of supervisors, including national and European authorities, to oversee “significant” digital currencies including Facebook’s Libra, according to the European Commission’s cryptocurrency draft proposal

From LEAK: EU to create ‘superbody’ of watchdogs to oversee digital currencies – EURACTIV.com:

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The European Commission wants financial firms and other companies to share more customer data to create a “broader open finance space” with new services for citizens, according to a draft of the Digital Finance Strategy seen by EURACTIV.

The strategy, which could still be subject to changes, is expected be presented later this month. It outlines the Commission’s priority actions by 2024 to make “the benefits of digital finance available to European consumers and businesses,” the draft document reads.

From LEAK: Commission plans new revolution for “open finance” in 2022 – EURACTIV.com:

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The average transaction value of fast payments in Denmark and Sweden are less than 0.3% of GDP per capita, indicating they are used mainly for person-to-person payments. At the other end of the scale, the average transaction value of fast payments in Hong Kong SAR is over 6%, suggesting that they are used mainly for payments involving businesses (eg payment of rent).

From Fast retail payment systems:

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he Feds claim that between January 2019 and February 2020, somewhere between 45 per cent and 95 per cent of NS8’s listed assets appear to have been fictitious. During that period, the firm raised about $123m from investors.

From Online fraud prevention biz fails to prevent CEO’s alleged offline fraud • The Register:

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To that end, the House this week finally passed the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act, which should finally bring some meaningful privacy and security standards to the internet of things (IOT). Cory Gardner, Mark Warner, and other lawmakers note the bill creates some baseline standards for security and privacy that must be consistently updated (what a novel idea), while prohibiting government agencies from using gear that doesn’t pass muster. It also includes some transparency requirements mandating that any vulnerabilities in IOT hardware are disseminated among agencies and the public quickly:

From House Passes Bill To Address The Internet Of Broken Things | Techdirt:

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“Even where a crypto-asset would qualify as a MiFID II financial instrument (the so-called ‘security tokens’), there is a lack of clarity on how the existing regulatory framework for financial services applies to such assets and services related to them. As the existing regulatory framework was not designed with crypto-assets in mind, NCAs [national competent authority] face challenges in interpreting and applying the various requirements under EU law.”

From Leaked document: EU Commission aiming for a front position on crypto regulation – The Tokenizer:

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“ar from sounding the death knell for cash, the rise of digital payments will instead lead to the extinction of the plastic card, according to Deutsche Bank research on the future of payments.”

From “Cash is here to stay – cards are the true dinosaurs”.

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The National Audit Office report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on “The Production and Distribution of Cash” has been published. It makes for some fascinating reading (for people like me) but I think that the most interesting aspect of it is the big picture conclusion about the need for strategy: basically, no one knows what is going on and beyond some vague aspirations, no-one knows what to do about it.

TL:DR; “The declining use of cash is placing increasing pressure on the sustainability of the infrastructure for producing and distributing cash. The current approach to overseeing the cash system is fragmented with no clear link between HM Treasury’s overall objective of safeguarding access to cash for those who need it, the outcome that public bodies want to see and the costs associated with that outcome, and the responsibilities of the individual public bodies involved in the cash system.” [taken from the conclusion to the report].

In short, as I have long maintained, we have no strategy for cashlessness and we need one.

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As part of the research, which is being funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), SRUC researchers are capturing 3D and 2D facial images of the breeding sow population under various, typical commercial situations that are likely to result in different emotional states. 
The images are then processed at UWE Bristol, where state-of-the-art machine learning techniques are being developed to automatically identify different emotions conveyed by particular facial expressions.

From SRUC research hits Netflix – SRUC:

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The Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) and the UK’s four mobile network operators have announced a new initiative aiming to combat fraud by SMS.
BT-owned EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have joined forces to combat SMS-based phishing attacks, with key objectives of raising awareness of phishing by SMS, reducing the number of attacks and helping consumers report it.

From Capacity Media:

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MEF will establish a new SMS SenderID Protection Registry for early 2019. Starting with the banking industry and UK Government agencies, MEF and the operators will launch the cross-network initiative to allow merchants to register and protect the message headers used in SMS communications to consumers.

From Capacity Media:

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In April, UK banks and other financial services companies linked up with the mobile industry in a bid to block scam text messages exploiting the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic from reaching their targets and make sure legitimate messages get through. The initiative was organised by the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), Mobile UK and UK Finance, with support and assistance from the National Cyber Security Centre.

From Banks report surge in impersonation scams:

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